Lauderdale, John, Part 4

ORAL HISTORY OF CARL “RABBIT” YEARWOOD
Tape 4
Interviewed by Bill Sewell
Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge
April 5, 1985
Interviewer: Today is April 5, 1985. I’m talking to Carl “Rabbit” Yearwood, former Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge. Rabbit could you give us a little information about the former Recreation and Welfare Association that was back, that was formed back in the early days, in the ‘ 40’s.
Carl “Rabbit” Yearwood: Yeah, Bill. Of course I didn’t come to Oak Ridge and to Recreation Welfare Association until April 1945, and it had been in operation and was a going concern at that time, but it was unique in that it was formed for a specific purpose to do a specific job and not knowing when it would come to an end or what. The city had 75,000 people, or were going to build to 75,000 people, and all being behind a cyclone fence and not able to leave or come in without the official pass badge. It would have been very easy for a population that size to become unhappy if there wasn’t a lot of activity of interest inside the city. So the Army, Manhattan District Engineers organized or authorized the only, directed the organization of Recreation and Welfare Association to be a self-sustaining operation, with a Board of Directors, one representative. I always thought it was two, maybe it was one or two, but anyway, each operating organization contractor in Oak Ridge was part of the original board. And that was Union Carbide that operated the gaseous diffusion and Monsanto operated Oak Ridge National Lab, or X-10, and Tennessee Eastman operated the plant at Y-12, the American Bus Company operated the transit system inside the City, and Roane Anderson Company, which provided municipal services to the area. The Board was organized and employed the first director or executive director, a Mr. -?Swep?- Davis and he set up an activities program divided into physical recreation, social recreation, commercial operations and maintenance. Now under the physical recreation came the, just what it says, the ball leagues, the softball, the baseball, basketball, touch football, roller skating. Believe it or not we had a roller skating rink in Oak Ridge in those days, and we had a roller rink hockey league. The physical recreation also organized billiards leagues within the commercial billiards operators who operated the establishments at that time, and the playground activity, which was of real importance during the summertime. We also operated recreation centers at each of the elementary schools after school, and until 9 o’clock in the evening, and we also operated the recreation halls, Ridge Recreation Center, the Jefferson Recreation Center, the Middletown Recreation Center, Grove Center which was at that time known as Oak Grove, no, I’ve got it down Grove Center on the notes here. Most of these…
Interviewer: Where in Oak Ridge were these particular, like the Ridge, Ridge Hall?
Mr. Yearwood: Well, Ridge Center is where the Executive Training Center is now right opposite Alexander Motel in Jackson Square. Now the first teen center that I remember was in the heart of Jackson Square, trying to, opposite the Playhouse, on the other side of that little park there at the Jackson Square. Later the high school teen center was organized in the old central cafeteria building. Also had a center at the cafeteria building in East Village, known as Glenville, and we had the…
Interviewer: Can you tell me the location of those, about where they are?
Mr. Yearwood: Well, yeah the Glenville was later where the Elks Club was located and, of course, the Elks Club developed a park adjacent to their center when they were there. I believe today it still is in existence for the neighborhood to use.
Interviewer: That’s, I think, that Faith Baptist Church has that property now.
Mr. Yearwood: Probably, I believe you’re right and but they do. I have been by there, and the play facilities are still there and everything. We had a Scarboro Recreation Center and a Club Fiesta, which is now the present Senior Center, started to say Oak Ridge Senior Country Club.
Interviewer: That’s about what it is.
Mr. Yearwood: It’s about right. Now the youth centers were operated by the physical recreation department and the other centers which catered primarily to adults, that’s the Grove Center and Jefferson Center and Midtown Center, all catered to adults.
Interviewer: Now Midtown Center that’s where the Civic Center building is located today.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s right in that general location. Of course Jefferson Center now is off of Jefferson Avenue and Robertsville Road and has been redeveloped into an office building. We also had a center in the black community, and that was located right opposite where the Holiday Inn is now. And we had a baseball field right where the open theater use to be. Social recreation also operated two daycare centers: Tennyson Daycare and Nesper House both located on Tennyson, was located on Tennyson and Tennessee Ave and Nesper on Nesper Road.
Interviewer: These were daycare centers that were provided for…
Mr. Yearwood: For working mothers.
Interviewer: For working mothers?
Mr. Yearwood: Yes.
Interviewer: Funded by whom?
Mr. Yearwood: Recreation and Welfare Association.
Interviewer: That’s kind of unique, isn’t?
Mr. Yearwood: We had to. Really that organization was to fill a lot of gaps that were needed to be filled. Of course then, the athletic facilities, we had the tennis courts where they are now at Jackson Square and Jefferson. Of course the high school’s have come in later years and then two at Jefferson Junior High School came in later years. But we also had two courts at the army barracks, which is located in the middle section of Downtown too. As I said before, it was awareness of a necessity of satisfying the leisure time of people within a fenced- in area, and Recreation and Welfare served as clearing point. If you and I and one other person wanted to form a fishing club, we had to go to Recreation and Welfare and apply for the right to organize a fishing club. Then a Recreation and Welfare representative would take the request to the legal people on the Hill as was known in those days, for clearance. And they either turned it down or gave us clearance, but they first had to go through Tennessee Sportsman, I mean Oak Ridge Sportsman Association, started through the Recreation and Welfare Association. Believe it or not, the original nucleus for the Fort Loudon Boating Club was formed in Oak Ridge right over back of Pinewood Park, in a warehouse building up there, where I organized a boating club. They built boats to sail and they moved their boats to Fort Loudon. And of course it grew and grew and grew from that point and very few people, I guess, realize now that the nucleus was right here in the City. Of course we had numerous ball fields. We had the major ball field which is now Carl Yearwood Park. We also had another baseball field just northeast of Oakwood Park, that was what it was then and it was Oakwood #2. We had two softball fields back up at the administration building where the heliport was later and is still there. We had Pinewood Park, which was the major softball park, and we also had Milt Dickens Park at that time, which was, I forget now what the name of it was, but it was there in the early days. We had two softball parks right about where the First Baptist Church is now, on the Turnpike. We had one, where the women always played their games over off back of the Jefferson Tennis Courts, and of course we had two at Robertsville Junior High School and I imagine both of those, well I know one of them is still in use, probably the other one is. But it wasn’t until late in the ‘50s that we built Bobby Hopkins Field and of course later than that even, what’s the other field name?
Interviewer: Grey Strang.
Mr. Yearwood: Grey Strang Field.
Interviewer: Of course Bobby Hopkins Field was originally named Ridgeview I believe.
Mr. Yearwood: Ridgeview.
Interviewer: Was there another name prior to that?
Mr. Yearwood: No. That was the first and only name prior to being named. And of course we had two softball fields in the mid ‘50s and built in the ‘50s and later moved. Well, the bleachers and stands and everything were moved to Oakwood ballpark and became a softball field where it had been a baseball field. We had the Ridgeview baseball park to replace the baseball league.
Interviewer: Rabbit, a lot of these facilities like you just mentioned Ridgeview Field or Bobby Hopkins that I know has been around, the facility has been around for 40 years, and I’m sure, the, was it the Recreation Welfare Association that funded this materials…?
Mr. Yearwood: No.
Interviewer: …and equipment for purchase for development or was it just strictly the federal government?
Mr. Yearwood: No, the federal government through the Office of Community Affairs, AEC, built Oakwood. Of course, the City, I mean, built Ridgeview and now Bobby Hopkins. Of course the City itself, with state funding, built Grey Strang Field. The federal government also built Midtown Ball Park and later moved them, later the City moved them to the present locations. In an ongoing movement from one thing to another that is, and having been in all those movements, it’s hard to tell just when one thing happened and then something else. But I’d like to think back to the first few years of Oak Ridge as being some of the most enjoyable times. All my 29 years were enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but there were some things that happened then that will not ever happen again. Like me playing Santa Claus. The first year, we had a man in the theater division, L.W. Venable - and I was trying to think of his name a few minutes ago and I couldn’t and now here it comes right out, see - who was a very accomplished accordionist and it fell my lot to be Santa Claus. We had a beautiful Santa Claus suit. Jane Bridges would come down to the Recreation office every morning, and make me up with a beard and with stick-um and cotton, and I couldn’t smoke, I couldn’t eat a hotdog, I couldn’t, and that beard was on from that time in the morning till 9 -10 o’clock at night, because, not only did I go to all the schools and play Santa Claus, but I also went to any government department that was having a party, I had to go play Santa Claus. Then at night I had to go play Santa Claus at Ridge Hall where we had Santa Land. And it was quite an experience. And I’ll never forget the day at Cedar Hill. Of course I had all the kids, L.W. played that Jingle Bells on that accordion, and Santa Claus would ring the bells and jostle a big bag of candies, and at, Cedar Hill, Santa had all the youngsters running by and sitting on his lap, telling what he wanted for Christmas and all that, you know. This little fellow came up and I says, “And what do you want ‘ol Santa to bring you?” He says, “I wrote you a letter”, and pointed his finger right at my nose. Then, not necessarily the first year, because we couldn’t call this club the Little Atoms Club until it was out what we were doing, but we still had the 75,000 people that we were, this was in the 75. We had a Little Atoms Club. This was a Saturday morning theater party club and the kids could come, and they could get in for a dime. They could buy a sack of popcorn for a dime, and a Coca-Cola for a nickel, and for a quarter they could have a big time. We started off all this with some of them volunteering to sing a song or tell a joke, or we had a little entertainment before the movie started and we sang songs, group songs. L.W. playing that accordion and we had a rollicking time there. Believe it or not, we had a full house and I think that theater seated about 600 every Saturday morning.
Interviewer: Which theater was this?
Mr. Yearwood: It was Jefferson Theater, which is now the dance studio, I believe, in the Jefferson area. Then I had another experience, along as time went on. I became Athletic Director and we had a social director I don’t know whether the arts director who had charge of the symphony orchestra and the Playhouse and the chorale group and all his time at Recreation and Welfare came to a close and he left to go back to Pennsylvania. But those groups were still going under the auspices of the Recreation Department. So it fell to the responsibility of the Athletic Director to answer to the needs of the chorale group. I always wondered what those music publishers thought when they got a request for some music signed by the Athletic Director. But now the classic, the little long and I’ve listed it last because I’ve got one up here that I can’t tell on this tape. It’s not really bad, but the first parade we ever had in Oak Ridge was the first of October, Halloween does come in October doesn’t it?
Interviewer: Right.
Mr. Yearwood: I was appointed parade chairman. I had to organize the parade and be parade marshal and we, it was no great problem to get floats. All these big flatbed government trucks in here we could get any number of them we wanted. The ice company that was here at that time had a beautiful float. They froze objects in big, the old ford fashion big kegs of ice and threw them on that thing right at the last minute, and different organizations that were in town, all the playgrounds had a float and it was quite a thing. The Oak Ridge High School Band, or might have been the military band, I don’t know, anyway, there was a band there. And right in front of that band was one Carl Rabbit Yearwood, mounted on a retired Army cavalry horse. I take it all back about the band, it was drum and bugle corps. Now we formed the parade, formed up back of Alexander Motel, it was the Guest House at that time, and didn’t have the addition which was later built on it, and the line of march was down Kentucky Avenue to Tennessee, up Tennessee to Georgia and up Georgia to Broadway again and then up Broadway and turn up to Blankenship Field for the judging of the floats. Now we had the…
Interviewer: Back in those days that was the Downtown was it not?
Mr. Yearwood: That was the Downtown, yeah.
Interviewer: Jackson Square.
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah, now, they had a platform that some Senator Keller, I believe had been here and had spoken and they had a platform, and it was still there, so that was going to be our judges stand. Our plan was to take the floats by, first and then kind of line up on the way out. So naturally we had the judging numbers on the side of each float, on the left side of each float. Well, by the time the parade started, the safety department later estimated that there were 25,000 people from the starting point back to where it turned up to the high school, and in the high school bleachers. Now you know how thick. There wasn’t a space much wider than your office here for the parade to march through. Of course when the trucks came, why they backed up a little bit but when yours truly on that horse got to the people on the sides of the walk and when that drum and bugle corps struck up that military air, that horse started prancing, and we went sideways up the street with me holding the reins as tight as I could but he was going. Well we got successfully to the entrance of Blankenship Field, and I turned and rode over in front of the reviewing stand and looked back, and something had held up the drum and bugle corps, and they were late coming into the parade ground. They started up the right side of the field, which was wrong. Well I wheeled ol’ army horse around there to go over and redirect them, and he took off up Blankenship Field as fast as he could run, ran up to the north end of the field and the only thing that stopped him was a highback and a cyclone fence. I turned him around and he’d start back down and then he’d take off and run into the fence again. After three passes at it, why I dismounted and tied him up at the top of the fence, ran back down the field. Of course the parade was all through going the wrong way. There I had to run along and change all the numbers from one side to another. But it was a great affair. You know that many people turn out in, had we known that there had been that kind of turn out, we would have planned a longer parade route, but it was a great affair.
Interviewer: That’s something that we’re missing here in Oak Ridge and it’s just recently, well I guess in the last couple of months, there has been some interest expressed as far as developing another annual parade. I think that they will do that ‘cause we’ve been accused as, being southerners, as not knowing how to conduct a parade or how to put on a parade, so maybe some of our northern friends that are used to the parades can help us out, get involved and coordinate it but...
Mr. Yearwood: Well, of course the Symphony Orchestra and Oak Ridge Community Playhouse and the Chorale group, Chorus, and all, came under Hal Corsen of the, I guess it was really in the social side of the program, but his organization kind of stood out because it did present a wonderful program for the Oak Ridgers just musically and art-wise. Now the second phase came in 1947, when the Oak Ridge Recreation and Welfare had served its purpose successfully, and AEC had come in as the operating organization of the whole thing, so the Community Affairs Division, I guess it was of AEC took over as our sponsoring head, and the social recreation, I mean the physical recreation went along just about as it had been except money-wise. The money wasn’t, I mean we had money for continuing the recreation centers after school in 8 locations. We had Wildcat Den and Glenville. We had the Scarboro Recreation Center and all the league activities and all the ball fields and tennis courts and everything, that we, pretty well, held our own. But then the next year, they’d knocked off some money and the next year they’d knock off some money and the next year they’d knock off some money and by 1951...
Interviewer: What was the cause of that? Before you answer that, let me go ahead and change tapes because we are running out of tape here. I’ll put it on [side 2…]
Interviewer: …AEC where the recreation budget was being cut back over the…several years there.
Mr. Yearwood: Recreation and Welfare came in when we were actually building a city and plants and everything in an effort to produce the first atomic bomb. Once that was accomplished, there was no need for additional construction of dormitories, or construction of more plants, or construction of this. So further construction immediately came to a halt. This of course brought on a reduction in the population and the availability of money to provide the same services that Recreation and Welfare provided. Like the Recreation and Welfare overall budget the last year it operated was 2 ½ million dollars. I don’t know what the budget was just for our Recreation and Welfare, I mean Recreation Department operation, but I do know that it was a retrenchment, (no just a bad cold). Retrenchment into everything, brought on a cut in the program. Now to show you that you can do things to get things done, when AEC Office of Community Affairs first took us over, we were under that office supervision or direction but we were on Roane Anderson for management services payroll. So, in this retrenchment program, not only of recreation but everything, (I thought I was going to get through this cold without that) but MSI, Management Services Incorporated, was organized in 1951 to take over the operation of Roane Anderson Company. Of course it kept a lot of this top personnel and that top personnel and said, well if we’re going to manage it, I mean pay them, we going to manage it, so we went under, Recreation and Welfare, came under the supervision of Roane Anderson, I mean Management Services Incorporated. Of course Management Services Incorporated were under the operation of the office of Community Affairs of AEC. But during 1951 to 1960, there was, it just went down, went down. Along in 1952, I guess it was, at the budget hearing Al ---?Strasses?- was then the Director of Recreation, at a budget hearing he says, “well I tell you where you can save one block of money”, he says, “I have resigned as of this minute” and walked out. I mean he was an experienced recreation man that’d been brought in here to operate an ongoing program and wanted to keep it that way, and the cuts that were being proposed were just big blows to his desires and he knew that he could get other work that would be more satisfying. By the way, he went from there to a job with AEC, and from there he went to City Manager of Springfield, Ohio. Well he went there as Recreation Director and then he became Welfare Director and then he became City Manager. It was a feeling within personnel in the Office of Community Affairs that when the day arrived that the city would become a municipality, that the people would not be willing to pay for anything that they had been getting for free. So, the direction was to cut the recreation program down to what was felt that the people of Oak Ridge would be willing to pay.
Interviewer: Were there any fees or charges back then to help offset any of the expenses?
Mr. Yearwood: Very minimal. Of course, we had fees for the swimming pool. We had fees for leagues, softball league, baseball league and all, but they in no way, they paid for the umpire and the balls that we used, the scorekeeper and what not, but they didn’t pay for the maintenance of the facilities. Then along the way, the afternoon and evening community centers at various schools were cut out. The number of playgrounds by this time had declined. Really, the first year that I was director of playgrounds, we operated 22 playgrounds, this was 1945, 75,000 people. Now the population of Oak Ridge by 19--, in the 1950 to ‘60’s era, dropped to 30,000 people. And a lot of the areas where we had playgrounds had no children. So we did operate the centers up until, along in about ’54, ’55 we had to completely cut them.
Interviewer: Was this disappointing to you? How did you feel as a director that your funds, operating funds were being cut?
Mr. Yearwood: Well I had to use various skills and manipulation. Like I’d get the edict to, well, I became Director of the department late in ’52 and I weathered the biggest part of this operation. But they’d say “cut your budget x number of dollars”. So I’d cut out Ridge Hall, “oh no we can’t do that.” I said manipulation, you know.
Interviewer: They didn’t give you the flexibility to cut in overall…
Mr. Yearwood: Cut in personnel, very embarrassing. I had a supervisor of Ridge Hall, bless his soul, great man with the public, finest gentleman and well, his life was to do custodial work. I mean he didn’t do custodial work. His salary dropped to custodial level, and he had half the custodial, regular custodial. In other words, they thought that the center could operate on its own with no supervision. Now, I don’t mean to backhand any of these with this feeling. This is their honest conviction, that people were not going to be willing to assume the cost of operating what they had been getting for free, figuratively speaking. The fees at the swimming pool, and I’m sure that the same reason for fees at the swimming pool being what they have to be today, is just to pay for the operation of that facility. It’s not to make money to pay for the upkeep of the tennis courts. And that was, of course, it really wasn’t that much concern of whether it paid its fees in the early part, but we got to the point where, it’s like you have with having to consider raising swimming prices. We had to consider, as long as we’re making enough to pay for the operation, we’re going to keep this as a recreation facility at the lowest cost to the using public as we can. It wasn’t until 1960 that I finally saw a away to raise prices to where we could start breaking even again. We’d dropped behind a little bit. And very nominal price going from 20 cents to 25 cents for children and 40 cents to 50 cents for adults, then putting in a season pass program. But I couldn’t get the officials of Roane Anderson to let me do that because they were going to be responsible for the operation of the swimming pool from the time it opened until June 1st, yeah June 1st when the City started operating as a municipality, completely. Finally at the last minute they broke down and let me install the passes under their regime.
Interviewer: I know it was your philosophy too, not only to, well, its, I think, everyone’s objective to meet operating costs, not to operate in the red, so to speak, but it’s also, I think, your philosophy to keep the rates as low as possible to allow as many kids as possible to utilize that facility and I think that’s commendable, that’s...
Mr. Yearwood: ...and Bill, too, I think it, of course, the success of the municipal swimming pool lay primarily in the learn-to-swim classes that were conducted by the Red Cross in the morning. Teaching the children how to swim and by having qualified lifeguards and personnel on duty in the afternoons, mamas who had had to go to the pool reluctantly, to sit with the children didn’t have to go anymore. A child could swim and they had good lifeguard, good supervision, 25 cents in the afternoon is good babysitting.
Interviewer: It sure is.
Mr. Yearwood: But my philosophy that it’s better to have 50,000 paying 25 or 50 cents than to have 25,000 paying a dollar. I mean, you might get the operating cost, but you’re losing the intent of that facility to provide a recreational outlet for children. This is the reason that I always, well, the swimming pool actually did pay for some of the other programs during the period between ‘51 and ‘60 because, I finally got them to, got the officials, to permit me to spend whatever money was made at the swimming pool over operating cost. I mentioned to you a few minutes ago, you know, June is a treacherous month and it’s the last month of the fiscal year, so you never know back in December what you’re going to do in June. So you have to play it close until you see what you’re doing in June. Well one year, we were very fortunate of having a gentleman in the Roane Anderson, I mean, MSI office that was a cost accountant, and he kept a day-by-day cost of what it was, our costs were running. And at the end of the month of June, about two days before the end of the month of June, he says you’ve got about between 7 and 800 dollars that you could spend right quick. So I went to the warehouse and withdrew about $750 worth of cleaning materials, janitorial supplies. And when the final accounting was done on the fiscal year that year I had under spent $45 dollars on the entire budget. Today I don’t believe it is quite that simple.
Interviewer: No I can attest to that. It’s real different.
Mr. Yearwood: I don’t ???? Really...
Interviewer: Let me ask you something about the organization, back up just a minute on the Recreation Association. That was kind of a novel idea at the time to involve the different contractors, as far as their participation in the recreation program, but I think you kind of carried that on too, as far as associations and developing associations in the City. We probably have 400 clubs and organizations in Oak Ridge, and I guess half or three quarters of them, I guess, at one time originally started through the Recreation Department. And once they became self sustaining, of course, you didn’t have the staff to maintain them and you just kind of let them be a self-directing group, is that correct?
Mr. Yearwood: This is right. The Community Playhouse started under the direction and supervision of Recreation and Welfare but when Recreation and Welfare went out, the Playhouse went on its own and it certainly has provided an activity for the community. Symphony orchestra same, children’s theater is the same way. Of course children’s theater started more in connection with the Community Playhouse and then as separate entity. The ACAC started under, I mean not under Recreation and Welfare, but under the Recreation Department in 1952, very shortly after they became a non-Recreation and Welfare operation. Our church basketball leagues were started as self-sustaining. They paid fees to cover the cost of officials and scorekeepers, but then the Recreation Department stood the cost of the gymnasiums and, of course the teams furnished their own uniforms and their own ball to play with. We did furnish a game ball so it will be a neutral ball and not one that one team was used to another one wasn’t. And this is just one example. As I mentioned earlier, I think the Sportsman’s Club started as a group sponsored by the Recreation and Welfare Association. Certainly we had some softball leagues back in those early days that more or less, well, they paid in the fees to cover their umpire and ball equipment. But, of course, in the real early days we furnished a game bag so they didn’t even have to have a first baseman’s glove, a catcher’s glove or balls or bats or mask. We furnished that, the home team of the first game would come and pick it up and pass it on and the home team of the last game would bring it back the next day. But there is a reason, it’s always my theory, I’ve been to a lot of recreation conferences in my time, and if anything made me mad, it was the time that somebody brought up a question that someone wanted to come and bring a health club right down the street from them. This other guy jumped up and said, well you better put in one before he gets it in there or you’ll look bad. Well that’s the direct opposite of my philosophy. It’s not what the Recreation Department has; it’s what the community has. The Recreation Department could in no way provide for the gymnastics club, provide for the ACAC, provide for the dance organizations in town or the Community Playhouse or any of those things but the community has them. That’s the payoff as to what the community has in the way of leisure time opportunities.
Interviewer: I know this has been carried on for years, that philosophy, because there’s just no way that our department can maintain a lot of these organizations. We will help anyone get started as an organization and then back off…
Mr. Yearwood: I remember back, Bill, the same thing when the gymnastics club started. This teacher at the high school started gymnastics club as her pet project but then she moved on to Chattanooga.
Interviewer: Martha Swayze, wasn’t?
Mr. Yearwood: Martha, I couldn’t think of the name, yeah, Martha Swayze, and she was great for the community because she did that of her own love for kids and for gymnastics. But when she left, it left a void. The club was kind of on its own to get someone to do the directing. So this department helped them with printed material, I mean we’d do the reproduction for them. We’d help them in any little way that we could, except take them under our complete wing, and you see how well it has prospered under its own organization.
Interviewer: I know we’ve always felt that the organizations that we assist and we come in contact with - Girls Club, Boys Club, Girl Scouts, whatever - we feel that we’re complimenting each other, we hope we are, instead of conflicting with each other. We’re here to provide a service for, you know, for all the youth and all the Oak Ridgers.
Mr. Yearwood: Well, you see that’s when the Boys Club came in, Shep Lauter had the Shep Lauter Baseball School for kids on Saturday mornings. The Boys Club came in, and of course they were attracting boys to the club they got. I think they used our facilities for a while but we worked with them. We let them take the little boys. We had a real tiny bunch of boys playing tee ball for awhile. But when these kids went over to the Boys Club, we had no worry because we knew that they were in healthy activities, just like they would have been under us. There’s no jealousy whatsoever. In fact, I guess as John Lauderdale said, I could tell some tales out of school now, the Boys Club got in such a condition one time, they didn’t have money to buy a lot of inflated balls and everything. I’d take Lawrence Hahn on up to my storeroom every once and a while. And I didn’t pass on brand new equipment to him ‘cause I had to have brand new equipment of my own, but I’d passed on some pretty good equipment to him so that he could keep that group of boys that he had busy in basketball. Thank goodness the Boys Club has prospered through the years and has grown, and is doing a great job for the community and what little I could I’d help him. I always brag about another thing as smart as the Boys Club. I was a member of, I guess, the original Board of Directors and forget…I got a lapse there of what I was talking about when I said I was a member, but yeah, I know what it was now. Boys Club was really about to go out. Lawrence Hahn had lost his face in anything that ever going to happen toward getting a facility. Ben Johnson and I decided that John Smith, who was an auditor for the City of Oak Ridge, member of the Elks Club, very benevolent man, lover of the Boys Club, we decided that he was the only one who could save the day by being President. But John didn’t want any part of it. I stood in his office one morning and wrung his arm until he finally agreed that he would be President. From the day he took over, things started to happen. Now John had a way. He started to build on to the building that they had and he went over to Knoxville to a concrete block place, going to try to work a contract to get a discount on concrete block. But he came away with an agreement that that company would furnish the concrete block for what they needed at that time. That John could work those things; wasn’t anybody else around that had the knack. I don’t guess you ever knew John.
Interviewer: No I didn’t.
Mr. Yearwood: It’s too bad that you didn’t know him because he was such a great personality and great doer of things.
Interviewer: That’s who the Boy’s Club Field is named after?
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah.
Interviewer: He was the first President.
Mr. Yearwood: He was the going... Now Hardy Addison, the former Captain of the Police Department was a great motivator in the start of the Boys Club. But there are very few people that have the knack of getting things done that John Smith had. Aside from that part, Ben and John and I were on a committee to pick a slate of officers. Ben and I framed up the place. They had a, for a while we had a two to one vote. We didn’t have a unanimous vote on being inducted. Now we’ve come down to, I might say, Bill that, in 1952, when I was officially appointed as Director of the Recreation, the budget was $135,000. None of this would be, had a part time after school program in all the schools and various other activities that we’d been carrying on. By 1960, the last budget that I had under AEC, I was down to $73,000. Bur some good things happened during that time. We remodeled Ridge Hall so that the Library, we remodeled it so that the Library served well if not completely adequately, constructed Midtown Softball Park, Ridgeview Baseball Parks, reopened Scarboro Community Center and Recreation Center, major repairs and painting at the Municipal Pool in 1955. There’s a story behind that too. When Al -?Strasses?- was director, he and all the rest of us knew that the pool needed to be painted. It was painted when it was first built in 1945 with wartime calcimine paint, and of course, that doesn’t stay around very long. So we painted four big squares in the pool floor, with four different kinds of swimming pool paint. By the time that we were about to get funded to paint the pool, we only had paint on one of those squares, and it had a pretty good amount of the paint still on there hadn’t flaked off, but all the rest of those three were gone. So we knew what kind of paint we wanted. We knew it was a paint company in Cleveland, Ohio. We had their literature that came with covering qualities, so our Engineering Department figured out how much paint it was going to take to paint the pool. They figured 900 gallons. The Purchasing Department sent a request for a price, not a bid but just out-and-out price on 900 gallons of paint. And the Receiving Department at the paint company called the Purchasing Department on long distance and says, you damn sure you want that much paint? And as it turned out, I think, we had to reorder about 3 or 400 gallons to finish the job.
Interviewer: Rabbit we’re running out of tape once again. We’re going to have to finish this up hopefully next week. This is Bill Sewell, Recreation Department…
Transcribed: November 2005
Typed by LB

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ORAL HISTORY OF CARL “RABBIT” YEARWOOD
Tape 4
Interviewed by Bill Sewell
Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge
April 5, 1985
Interviewer: Today is April 5, 1985. I’m talking to Carl “Rabbit” Yearwood, former Recreation Parks Director for the City of Oak Ridge. Rabbit could you give us a little information about the former Recreation and Welfare Association that was back, that was formed back in the early days, in the ‘ 40’s.
Carl “Rabbit” Yearwood: Yeah, Bill. Of course I didn’t come to Oak Ridge and to Recreation Welfare Association until April 1945, and it had been in operation and was a going concern at that time, but it was unique in that it was formed for a specific purpose to do a specific job and not knowing when it would come to an end or what. The city had 75,000 people, or were going to build to 75,000 people, and all being behind a cyclone fence and not able to leave or come in without the official pass badge. It would have been very easy for a population that size to become unhappy if there wasn’t a lot of activity of interest inside the city. So the Army, Manhattan District Engineers organized or authorized the only, directed the organization of Recreation and Welfare Association to be a self-sustaining operation, with a Board of Directors, one representative. I always thought it was two, maybe it was one or two, but anyway, each operating organization contractor in Oak Ridge was part of the original board. And that was Union Carbide that operated the gaseous diffusion and Monsanto operated Oak Ridge National Lab, or X-10, and Tennessee Eastman operated the plant at Y-12, the American Bus Company operated the transit system inside the City, and Roane Anderson Company, which provided municipal services to the area. The Board was organized and employed the first director or executive director, a Mr. -?Swep?- Davis and he set up an activities program divided into physical recreation, social recreation, commercial operations and maintenance. Now under the physical recreation came the, just what it says, the ball leagues, the softball, the baseball, basketball, touch football, roller skating. Believe it or not we had a roller skating rink in Oak Ridge in those days, and we had a roller rink hockey league. The physical recreation also organized billiards leagues within the commercial billiards operators who operated the establishments at that time, and the playground activity, which was of real importance during the summertime. We also operated recreation centers at each of the elementary schools after school, and until 9 o’clock in the evening, and we also operated the recreation halls, Ridge Recreation Center, the Jefferson Recreation Center, the Middletown Recreation Center, Grove Center which was at that time known as Oak Grove, no, I’ve got it down Grove Center on the notes here. Most of these…
Interviewer: Where in Oak Ridge were these particular, like the Ridge, Ridge Hall?
Mr. Yearwood: Well, Ridge Center is where the Executive Training Center is now right opposite Alexander Motel in Jackson Square. Now the first teen center that I remember was in the heart of Jackson Square, trying to, opposite the Playhouse, on the other side of that little park there at the Jackson Square. Later the high school teen center was organized in the old central cafeteria building. Also had a center at the cafeteria building in East Village, known as Glenville, and we had the…
Interviewer: Can you tell me the location of those, about where they are?
Mr. Yearwood: Well, yeah the Glenville was later where the Elks Club was located and, of course, the Elks Club developed a park adjacent to their center when they were there. I believe today it still is in existence for the neighborhood to use.
Interviewer: That’s, I think, that Faith Baptist Church has that property now.
Mr. Yearwood: Probably, I believe you’re right and but they do. I have been by there, and the play facilities are still there and everything. We had a Scarboro Recreation Center and a Club Fiesta, which is now the present Senior Center, started to say Oak Ridge Senior Country Club.
Interviewer: That’s about what it is.
Mr. Yearwood: It’s about right. Now the youth centers were operated by the physical recreation department and the other centers which catered primarily to adults, that’s the Grove Center and Jefferson Center and Midtown Center, all catered to adults.
Interviewer: Now Midtown Center that’s where the Civic Center building is located today.
Mr. Yearwood: That’s right in that general location. Of course Jefferson Center now is off of Jefferson Avenue and Robertsville Road and has been redeveloped into an office building. We also had a center in the black community, and that was located right opposite where the Holiday Inn is now. And we had a baseball field right where the open theater use to be. Social recreation also operated two daycare centers: Tennyson Daycare and Nesper House both located on Tennyson, was located on Tennyson and Tennessee Ave and Nesper on Nesper Road.
Interviewer: These were daycare centers that were provided for…
Mr. Yearwood: For working mothers.
Interviewer: For working mothers?
Mr. Yearwood: Yes.
Interviewer: Funded by whom?
Mr. Yearwood: Recreation and Welfare Association.
Interviewer: That’s kind of unique, isn’t?
Mr. Yearwood: We had to. Really that organization was to fill a lot of gaps that were needed to be filled. Of course then, the athletic facilities, we had the tennis courts where they are now at Jackson Square and Jefferson. Of course the high school’s have come in later years and then two at Jefferson Junior High School came in later years. But we also had two courts at the army barracks, which is located in the middle section of Downtown too. As I said before, it was awareness of a necessity of satisfying the leisure time of people within a fenced- in area, and Recreation and Welfare served as clearing point. If you and I and one other person wanted to form a fishing club, we had to go to Recreation and Welfare and apply for the right to organize a fishing club. Then a Recreation and Welfare representative would take the request to the legal people on the Hill as was known in those days, for clearance. And they either turned it down or gave us clearance, but they first had to go through Tennessee Sportsman, I mean Oak Ridge Sportsman Association, started through the Recreation and Welfare Association. Believe it or not, the original nucleus for the Fort Loudon Boating Club was formed in Oak Ridge right over back of Pinewood Park, in a warehouse building up there, where I organized a boating club. They built boats to sail and they moved their boats to Fort Loudon. And of course it grew and grew and grew from that point and very few people, I guess, realize now that the nucleus was right here in the City. Of course we had numerous ball fields. We had the major ball field which is now Carl Yearwood Park. We also had another baseball field just northeast of Oakwood Park, that was what it was then and it was Oakwood #2. We had two softball fields back up at the administration building where the heliport was later and is still there. We had Pinewood Park, which was the major softball park, and we also had Milt Dickens Park at that time, which was, I forget now what the name of it was, but it was there in the early days. We had two softball parks right about where the First Baptist Church is now, on the Turnpike. We had one, where the women always played their games over off back of the Jefferson Tennis Courts, and of course we had two at Robertsville Junior High School and I imagine both of those, well I know one of them is still in use, probably the other one is. But it wasn’t until late in the ‘50s that we built Bobby Hopkins Field and of course later than that even, what’s the other field name?
Interviewer: Grey Strang.
Mr. Yearwood: Grey Strang Field.
Interviewer: Of course Bobby Hopkins Field was originally named Ridgeview I believe.
Mr. Yearwood: Ridgeview.
Interviewer: Was there another name prior to that?
Mr. Yearwood: No. That was the first and only name prior to being named. And of course we had two softball fields in the mid ‘50s and built in the ‘50s and later moved. Well, the bleachers and stands and everything were moved to Oakwood ballpark and became a softball field where it had been a baseball field. We had the Ridgeview baseball park to replace the baseball league.
Interviewer: Rabbit, a lot of these facilities like you just mentioned Ridgeview Field or Bobby Hopkins that I know has been around, the facility has been around for 40 years, and I’m sure, the, was it the Recreation Welfare Association that funded this materials…?
Mr. Yearwood: No.
Interviewer: …and equipment for purchase for development or was it just strictly the federal government?
Mr. Yearwood: No, the federal government through the Office of Community Affairs, AEC, built Oakwood. Of course, the City, I mean, built Ridgeview and now Bobby Hopkins. Of course the City itself, with state funding, built Grey Strang Field. The federal government also built Midtown Ball Park and later moved them, later the City moved them to the present locations. In an ongoing movement from one thing to another that is, and having been in all those movements, it’s hard to tell just when one thing happened and then something else. But I’d like to think back to the first few years of Oak Ridge as being some of the most enjoyable times. All my 29 years were enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but there were some things that happened then that will not ever happen again. Like me playing Santa Claus. The first year, we had a man in the theater division, L.W. Venable - and I was trying to think of his name a few minutes ago and I couldn’t and now here it comes right out, see - who was a very accomplished accordionist and it fell my lot to be Santa Claus. We had a beautiful Santa Claus suit. Jane Bridges would come down to the Recreation office every morning, and make me up with a beard and with stick-um and cotton, and I couldn’t smoke, I couldn’t eat a hotdog, I couldn’t, and that beard was on from that time in the morning till 9 -10 o’clock at night, because, not only did I go to all the schools and play Santa Claus, but I also went to any government department that was having a party, I had to go play Santa Claus. Then at night I had to go play Santa Claus at Ridge Hall where we had Santa Land. And it was quite an experience. And I’ll never forget the day at Cedar Hill. Of course I had all the kids, L.W. played that Jingle Bells on that accordion, and Santa Claus would ring the bells and jostle a big bag of candies, and at, Cedar Hill, Santa had all the youngsters running by and sitting on his lap, telling what he wanted for Christmas and all that, you know. This little fellow came up and I says, “And what do you want ‘ol Santa to bring you?” He says, “I wrote you a letter”, and pointed his finger right at my nose. Then, not necessarily the first year, because we couldn’t call this club the Little Atoms Club until it was out what we were doing, but we still had the 75,000 people that we were, this was in the 75. We had a Little Atoms Club. This was a Saturday morning theater party club and the kids could come, and they could get in for a dime. They could buy a sack of popcorn for a dime, and a Coca-Cola for a nickel, and for a quarter they could have a big time. We started off all this with some of them volunteering to sing a song or tell a joke, or we had a little entertainment before the movie started and we sang songs, group songs. L.W. playing that accordion and we had a rollicking time there. Believe it or not, we had a full house and I think that theater seated about 600 every Saturday morning.
Interviewer: Which theater was this?
Mr. Yearwood: It was Jefferson Theater, which is now the dance studio, I believe, in the Jefferson area. Then I had another experience, along as time went on. I became Athletic Director and we had a social director I don’t know whether the arts director who had charge of the symphony orchestra and the Playhouse and the chorale group and all his time at Recreation and Welfare came to a close and he left to go back to Pennsylvania. But those groups were still going under the auspices of the Recreation Department. So it fell to the responsibility of the Athletic Director to answer to the needs of the chorale group. I always wondered what those music publishers thought when they got a request for some music signed by the Athletic Director. But now the classic, the little long and I’ve listed it last because I’ve got one up here that I can’t tell on this tape. It’s not really bad, but the first parade we ever had in Oak Ridge was the first of October, Halloween does come in October doesn’t it?
Interviewer: Right.
Mr. Yearwood: I was appointed parade chairman. I had to organize the parade and be parade marshal and we, it was no great problem to get floats. All these big flatbed government trucks in here we could get any number of them we wanted. The ice company that was here at that time had a beautiful float. They froze objects in big, the old ford fashion big kegs of ice and threw them on that thing right at the last minute, and different organizations that were in town, all the playgrounds had a float and it was quite a thing. The Oak Ridge High School Band, or might have been the military band, I don’t know, anyway, there was a band there. And right in front of that band was one Carl Rabbit Yearwood, mounted on a retired Army cavalry horse. I take it all back about the band, it was drum and bugle corps. Now we formed the parade, formed up back of Alexander Motel, it was the Guest House at that time, and didn’t have the addition which was later built on it, and the line of march was down Kentucky Avenue to Tennessee, up Tennessee to Georgia and up Georgia to Broadway again and then up Broadway and turn up to Blankenship Field for the judging of the floats. Now we had the…
Interviewer: Back in those days that was the Downtown was it not?
Mr. Yearwood: That was the Downtown, yeah.
Interviewer: Jackson Square.
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah, now, they had a platform that some Senator Keller, I believe had been here and had spoken and they had a platform, and it was still there, so that was going to be our judges stand. Our plan was to take the floats by, first and then kind of line up on the way out. So naturally we had the judging numbers on the side of each float, on the left side of each float. Well, by the time the parade started, the safety department later estimated that there were 25,000 people from the starting point back to where it turned up to the high school, and in the high school bleachers. Now you know how thick. There wasn’t a space much wider than your office here for the parade to march through. Of course when the trucks came, why they backed up a little bit but when yours truly on that horse got to the people on the sides of the walk and when that drum and bugle corps struck up that military air, that horse started prancing, and we went sideways up the street with me holding the reins as tight as I could but he was going. Well we got successfully to the entrance of Blankenship Field, and I turned and rode over in front of the reviewing stand and looked back, and something had held up the drum and bugle corps, and they were late coming into the parade ground. They started up the right side of the field, which was wrong. Well I wheeled ol’ army horse around there to go over and redirect them, and he took off up Blankenship Field as fast as he could run, ran up to the north end of the field and the only thing that stopped him was a highback and a cyclone fence. I turned him around and he’d start back down and then he’d take off and run into the fence again. After three passes at it, why I dismounted and tied him up at the top of the fence, ran back down the field. Of course the parade was all through going the wrong way. There I had to run along and change all the numbers from one side to another. But it was a great affair. You know that many people turn out in, had we known that there had been that kind of turn out, we would have planned a longer parade route, but it was a great affair.
Interviewer: That’s something that we’re missing here in Oak Ridge and it’s just recently, well I guess in the last couple of months, there has been some interest expressed as far as developing another annual parade. I think that they will do that ‘cause we’ve been accused as, being southerners, as not knowing how to conduct a parade or how to put on a parade, so maybe some of our northern friends that are used to the parades can help us out, get involved and coordinate it but...
Mr. Yearwood: Well, of course the Symphony Orchestra and Oak Ridge Community Playhouse and the Chorale group, Chorus, and all, came under Hal Corsen of the, I guess it was really in the social side of the program, but his organization kind of stood out because it did present a wonderful program for the Oak Ridgers just musically and art-wise. Now the second phase came in 1947, when the Oak Ridge Recreation and Welfare had served its purpose successfully, and AEC had come in as the operating organization of the whole thing, so the Community Affairs Division, I guess it was of AEC took over as our sponsoring head, and the social recreation, I mean the physical recreation went along just about as it had been except money-wise. The money wasn’t, I mean we had money for continuing the recreation centers after school in 8 locations. We had Wildcat Den and Glenville. We had the Scarboro Recreation Center and all the league activities and all the ball fields and tennis courts and everything, that we, pretty well, held our own. But then the next year, they’d knocked off some money and the next year they’d knock off some money and the next year they’d knock off some money and by 1951...
Interviewer: What was the cause of that? Before you answer that, let me go ahead and change tapes because we are running out of tape here. I’ll put it on [side 2…]
Interviewer: …AEC where the recreation budget was being cut back over the…several years there.
Mr. Yearwood: Recreation and Welfare came in when we were actually building a city and plants and everything in an effort to produce the first atomic bomb. Once that was accomplished, there was no need for additional construction of dormitories, or construction of more plants, or construction of this. So further construction immediately came to a halt. This of course brought on a reduction in the population and the availability of money to provide the same services that Recreation and Welfare provided. Like the Recreation and Welfare overall budget the last year it operated was 2 ½ million dollars. I don’t know what the budget was just for our Recreation and Welfare, I mean Recreation Department operation, but I do know that it was a retrenchment, (no just a bad cold). Retrenchment into everything, brought on a cut in the program. Now to show you that you can do things to get things done, when AEC Office of Community Affairs first took us over, we were under that office supervision or direction but we were on Roane Anderson for management services payroll. So, in this retrenchment program, not only of recreation but everything, (I thought I was going to get through this cold without that) but MSI, Management Services Incorporated, was organized in 1951 to take over the operation of Roane Anderson Company. Of course it kept a lot of this top personnel and that top personnel and said, well if we’re going to manage it, I mean pay them, we going to manage it, so we went under, Recreation and Welfare, came under the supervision of Roane Anderson, I mean Management Services Incorporated. Of course Management Services Incorporated were under the operation of the office of Community Affairs of AEC. But during 1951 to 1960, there was, it just went down, went down. Along in 1952, I guess it was, at the budget hearing Al ---?Strasses?- was then the Director of Recreation, at a budget hearing he says, “well I tell you where you can save one block of money”, he says, “I have resigned as of this minute” and walked out. I mean he was an experienced recreation man that’d been brought in here to operate an ongoing program and wanted to keep it that way, and the cuts that were being proposed were just big blows to his desires and he knew that he could get other work that would be more satisfying. By the way, he went from there to a job with AEC, and from there he went to City Manager of Springfield, Ohio. Well he went there as Recreation Director and then he became Welfare Director and then he became City Manager. It was a feeling within personnel in the Office of Community Affairs that when the day arrived that the city would become a municipality, that the people would not be willing to pay for anything that they had been getting for free. So, the direction was to cut the recreation program down to what was felt that the people of Oak Ridge would be willing to pay.
Interviewer: Were there any fees or charges back then to help offset any of the expenses?
Mr. Yearwood: Very minimal. Of course, we had fees for the swimming pool. We had fees for leagues, softball league, baseball league and all, but they in no way, they paid for the umpire and the balls that we used, the scorekeeper and what not, but they didn’t pay for the maintenance of the facilities. Then along the way, the afternoon and evening community centers at various schools were cut out. The number of playgrounds by this time had declined. Really, the first year that I was director of playgrounds, we operated 22 playgrounds, this was 1945, 75,000 people. Now the population of Oak Ridge by 19--, in the 1950 to ‘60’s era, dropped to 30,000 people. And a lot of the areas where we had playgrounds had no children. So we did operate the centers up until, along in about ’54, ’55 we had to completely cut them.
Interviewer: Was this disappointing to you? How did you feel as a director that your funds, operating funds were being cut?
Mr. Yearwood: Well I had to use various skills and manipulation. Like I’d get the edict to, well, I became Director of the department late in ’52 and I weathered the biggest part of this operation. But they’d say “cut your budget x number of dollars”. So I’d cut out Ridge Hall, “oh no we can’t do that.” I said manipulation, you know.
Interviewer: They didn’t give you the flexibility to cut in overall…
Mr. Yearwood: Cut in personnel, very embarrassing. I had a supervisor of Ridge Hall, bless his soul, great man with the public, finest gentleman and well, his life was to do custodial work. I mean he didn’t do custodial work. His salary dropped to custodial level, and he had half the custodial, regular custodial. In other words, they thought that the center could operate on its own with no supervision. Now, I don’t mean to backhand any of these with this feeling. This is their honest conviction, that people were not going to be willing to assume the cost of operating what they had been getting for free, figuratively speaking. The fees at the swimming pool, and I’m sure that the same reason for fees at the swimming pool being what they have to be today, is just to pay for the operation of that facility. It’s not to make money to pay for the upkeep of the tennis courts. And that was, of course, it really wasn’t that much concern of whether it paid its fees in the early part, but we got to the point where, it’s like you have with having to consider raising swimming prices. We had to consider, as long as we’re making enough to pay for the operation, we’re going to keep this as a recreation facility at the lowest cost to the using public as we can. It wasn’t until 1960 that I finally saw a away to raise prices to where we could start breaking even again. We’d dropped behind a little bit. And very nominal price going from 20 cents to 25 cents for children and 40 cents to 50 cents for adults, then putting in a season pass program. But I couldn’t get the officials of Roane Anderson to let me do that because they were going to be responsible for the operation of the swimming pool from the time it opened until June 1st, yeah June 1st when the City started operating as a municipality, completely. Finally at the last minute they broke down and let me install the passes under their regime.
Interviewer: I know it was your philosophy too, not only to, well, its, I think, everyone’s objective to meet operating costs, not to operate in the red, so to speak, but it’s also, I think, your philosophy to keep the rates as low as possible to allow as many kids as possible to utilize that facility and I think that’s commendable, that’s...
Mr. Yearwood: ...and Bill, too, I think it, of course, the success of the municipal swimming pool lay primarily in the learn-to-swim classes that were conducted by the Red Cross in the morning. Teaching the children how to swim and by having qualified lifeguards and personnel on duty in the afternoons, mamas who had had to go to the pool reluctantly, to sit with the children didn’t have to go anymore. A child could swim and they had good lifeguard, good supervision, 25 cents in the afternoon is good babysitting.
Interviewer: It sure is.
Mr. Yearwood: But my philosophy that it’s better to have 50,000 paying 25 or 50 cents than to have 25,000 paying a dollar. I mean, you might get the operating cost, but you’re losing the intent of that facility to provide a recreational outlet for children. This is the reason that I always, well, the swimming pool actually did pay for some of the other programs during the period between ‘51 and ‘60 because, I finally got them to, got the officials, to permit me to spend whatever money was made at the swimming pool over operating cost. I mentioned to you a few minutes ago, you know, June is a treacherous month and it’s the last month of the fiscal year, so you never know back in December what you’re going to do in June. So you have to play it close until you see what you’re doing in June. Well one year, we were very fortunate of having a gentleman in the Roane Anderson, I mean, MSI office that was a cost accountant, and he kept a day-by-day cost of what it was, our costs were running. And at the end of the month of June, about two days before the end of the month of June, he says you’ve got about between 7 and 800 dollars that you could spend right quick. So I went to the warehouse and withdrew about $750 worth of cleaning materials, janitorial supplies. And when the final accounting was done on the fiscal year that year I had under spent $45 dollars on the entire budget. Today I don’t believe it is quite that simple.
Interviewer: No I can attest to that. It’s real different.
Mr. Yearwood: I don’t ???? Really...
Interviewer: Let me ask you something about the organization, back up just a minute on the Recreation Association. That was kind of a novel idea at the time to involve the different contractors, as far as their participation in the recreation program, but I think you kind of carried that on too, as far as associations and developing associations in the City. We probably have 400 clubs and organizations in Oak Ridge, and I guess half or three quarters of them, I guess, at one time originally started through the Recreation Department. And once they became self sustaining, of course, you didn’t have the staff to maintain them and you just kind of let them be a self-directing group, is that correct?
Mr. Yearwood: This is right. The Community Playhouse started under the direction and supervision of Recreation and Welfare but when Recreation and Welfare went out, the Playhouse went on its own and it certainly has provided an activity for the community. Symphony orchestra same, children’s theater is the same way. Of course children’s theater started more in connection with the Community Playhouse and then as separate entity. The ACAC started under, I mean not under Recreation and Welfare, but under the Recreation Department in 1952, very shortly after they became a non-Recreation and Welfare operation. Our church basketball leagues were started as self-sustaining. They paid fees to cover the cost of officials and scorekeepers, but then the Recreation Department stood the cost of the gymnasiums and, of course the teams furnished their own uniforms and their own ball to play with. We did furnish a game ball so it will be a neutral ball and not one that one team was used to another one wasn’t. And this is just one example. As I mentioned earlier, I think the Sportsman’s Club started as a group sponsored by the Recreation and Welfare Association. Certainly we had some softball leagues back in those early days that more or less, well, they paid in the fees to cover their umpire and ball equipment. But, of course, in the real early days we furnished a game bag so they didn’t even have to have a first baseman’s glove, a catcher’s glove or balls or bats or mask. We furnished that, the home team of the first game would come and pick it up and pass it on and the home team of the last game would bring it back the next day. But there is a reason, it’s always my theory, I’ve been to a lot of recreation conferences in my time, and if anything made me mad, it was the time that somebody brought up a question that someone wanted to come and bring a health club right down the street from them. This other guy jumped up and said, well you better put in one before he gets it in there or you’ll look bad. Well that’s the direct opposite of my philosophy. It’s not what the Recreation Department has; it’s what the community has. The Recreation Department could in no way provide for the gymnastics club, provide for the ACAC, provide for the dance organizations in town or the Community Playhouse or any of those things but the community has them. That’s the payoff as to what the community has in the way of leisure time opportunities.
Interviewer: I know this has been carried on for years, that philosophy, because there’s just no way that our department can maintain a lot of these organizations. We will help anyone get started as an organization and then back off…
Mr. Yearwood: I remember back, Bill, the same thing when the gymnastics club started. This teacher at the high school started gymnastics club as her pet project but then she moved on to Chattanooga.
Interviewer: Martha Swayze, wasn’t?
Mr. Yearwood: Martha, I couldn’t think of the name, yeah, Martha Swayze, and she was great for the community because she did that of her own love for kids and for gymnastics. But when she left, it left a void. The club was kind of on its own to get someone to do the directing. So this department helped them with printed material, I mean we’d do the reproduction for them. We’d help them in any little way that we could, except take them under our complete wing, and you see how well it has prospered under its own organization.
Interviewer: I know we’ve always felt that the organizations that we assist and we come in contact with - Girls Club, Boys Club, Girl Scouts, whatever - we feel that we’re complimenting each other, we hope we are, instead of conflicting with each other. We’re here to provide a service for, you know, for all the youth and all the Oak Ridgers.
Mr. Yearwood: Well, you see that’s when the Boys Club came in, Shep Lauter had the Shep Lauter Baseball School for kids on Saturday mornings. The Boys Club came in, and of course they were attracting boys to the club they got. I think they used our facilities for a while but we worked with them. We let them take the little boys. We had a real tiny bunch of boys playing tee ball for awhile. But when these kids went over to the Boys Club, we had no worry because we knew that they were in healthy activities, just like they would have been under us. There’s no jealousy whatsoever. In fact, I guess as John Lauderdale said, I could tell some tales out of school now, the Boys Club got in such a condition one time, they didn’t have money to buy a lot of inflated balls and everything. I’d take Lawrence Hahn on up to my storeroom every once and a while. And I didn’t pass on brand new equipment to him ‘cause I had to have brand new equipment of my own, but I’d passed on some pretty good equipment to him so that he could keep that group of boys that he had busy in basketball. Thank goodness the Boys Club has prospered through the years and has grown, and is doing a great job for the community and what little I could I’d help him. I always brag about another thing as smart as the Boys Club. I was a member of, I guess, the original Board of Directors and forget…I got a lapse there of what I was talking about when I said I was a member, but yeah, I know what it was now. Boys Club was really about to go out. Lawrence Hahn had lost his face in anything that ever going to happen toward getting a facility. Ben Johnson and I decided that John Smith, who was an auditor for the City of Oak Ridge, member of the Elks Club, very benevolent man, lover of the Boys Club, we decided that he was the only one who could save the day by being President. But John didn’t want any part of it. I stood in his office one morning and wrung his arm until he finally agreed that he would be President. From the day he took over, things started to happen. Now John had a way. He started to build on to the building that they had and he went over to Knoxville to a concrete block place, going to try to work a contract to get a discount on concrete block. But he came away with an agreement that that company would furnish the concrete block for what they needed at that time. That John could work those things; wasn’t anybody else around that had the knack. I don’t guess you ever knew John.
Interviewer: No I didn’t.
Mr. Yearwood: It’s too bad that you didn’t know him because he was such a great personality and great doer of things.
Interviewer: That’s who the Boy’s Club Field is named after?
Mr. Yearwood: Yeah.
Interviewer: He was the first President.
Mr. Yearwood: He was the going... Now Hardy Addison, the former Captain of the Police Department was a great motivator in the start of the Boys Club. But there are very few people that have the knack of getting things done that John Smith had. Aside from that part, Ben and John and I were on a committee to pick a slate of officers. Ben and I framed up the place. They had a, for a while we had a two to one vote. We didn’t have a unanimous vote on being inducted. Now we’ve come down to, I might say, Bill that, in 1952, when I was officially appointed as Director of the Recreation, the budget was $135,000. None of this would be, had a part time after school program in all the schools and various other activities that we’d been carrying on. By 1960, the last budget that I had under AEC, I was down to $73,000. Bur some good things happened during that time. We remodeled Ridge Hall so that the Library, we remodeled it so that the Library served well if not completely adequately, constructed Midtown Softball Park, Ridgeview Baseball Parks, reopened Scarboro Community Center and Recreation Center, major repairs and painting at the Municipal Pool in 1955. There’s a story behind that too. When Al -?Strasses?- was director, he and all the rest of us knew that the pool needed to be painted. It was painted when it was first built in 1945 with wartime calcimine paint, and of course, that doesn’t stay around very long. So we painted four big squares in the pool floor, with four different kinds of swimming pool paint. By the time that we were about to get funded to paint the pool, we only had paint on one of those squares, and it had a pretty good amount of the paint still on there hadn’t flaked off, but all the rest of those three were gone. So we knew what kind of paint we wanted. We knew it was a paint company in Cleveland, Ohio. We had their literature that came with covering qualities, so our Engineering Department figured out how much paint it was going to take to paint the pool. They figured 900 gallons. The Purchasing Department sent a request for a price, not a bid but just out-and-out price on 900 gallons of paint. And the Receiving Department at the paint company called the Purchasing Department on long distance and says, you damn sure you want that much paint? And as it turned out, I think, we had to reorder about 3 or 400 gallons to finish the job.
Interviewer: Rabbit we’re running out of tape once again. We’re going to have to finish this up hopefully next week. This is Bill Sewell, Recreation Department…
Transcribed: November 2005
Typed by LB